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<title>that's the pain that cuts a straight line down through the heart (we call it love) by acrookedsaint</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23889505">that's the pain that cuts a straight line down through the heart (we call it love)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/acrookedsaint/pseuds/acrookedsaint'>acrookedsaint</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the pain down in your soul was the same (as the one down in mine) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Riverdale (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Betty POV, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:55:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,286</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23889505</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/acrookedsaint/pseuds/acrookedsaint</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Betty Cooper is perfect, and perfect things don't break.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Archie Andrews/Betty Cooper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the pain down in your soul was the same (as the one down in mine) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721857</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>73</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>that's the pain that cuts a straight line down through the heart (we call it love)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Love isn’t supposed to hurt, not really. Love is supposed to be butterflies and summer rain, gentle breezes on the skin and fluffy clouds in the sky. Love is supposed to be warm and soft, cocooning you, keeping you safe.</p>
<p>Love is supposed to be all things good and true. </p>
<p>Love is not supposed to make you gasp for air, to make you feel as though you are drowning. It is not supposed to make you want to scream instead of smile. It is not supposed to make you hurt. </p>
<p>At seventeen, Betty is familiar with love. She’s had her fair share of it. It’s in the way her blood runs through her veins for Veronica, in the way her mouth curves into a grin for Jughead, in the way her heart beats for Archie.</p>
<p>Love isn’t supposed to hurt, but it does. Inevitably, it does. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Betty’s first heartbreak comes suddenly, yet not. It’s a contradiction, because even though Betty knows that Archie can’t ever love her the way she loves him, not really, it stings like the sharpest knife raking across her fragile skin. She’s used to rejection, but not from Archie, and even though she knows that some things are too good to be true, even though she felt it coming a mile away, it hurts her like she’s never hurt before. She smiles through her tears, in a pink dress she’d thought would colour her future, not her heartbreak. </p>
<p>She wipes away her tears before she opens her front door. Betty Cooper is perfect, and perfect things don’t break.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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<p>Betty doesn’t wear pink, not much of it anyway, until Jughead Jones kisses her in the bedroom of her childhood, so different from the boy next door, yet still innocent and pure. Betty wears pink the next day, bright pink, the kind that will colour her future.</p>
<p>She’s perfect after all. Pretty and perfect in pink.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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<p>Jughead’s sweet - or at least as sweet as a boy can be growing up with a name like Jughead. He holds her hand and helps her plan baby showers and then -</p>
<p>And then he joins a gang, and once again Betty’s facade starts to crack, just a little. And then she’s not the girl next door anymore, she’s the girl who dances in a bar full of grown men who are strangers, in only her underwear, as her mother flees the scene and Jughead watches in horror. </p>
<p>But still, she keeps going, because she has too. She kisses Archie in a car, leans across and presses her lips to his because it’s the easier thing in the world to do. And maybe she’s a little heartbroken, maybe she’s a little hurt. </p>
<p>Yet the butterflies take flight in her stomach, until it’s all Betty can think about. </p>
<p>And light shades of pink begin to colour her wardrobe once again. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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<p>She’s wearing pink again the day of Veronica’s confirmation. But when she goes home with Jughead something doesn’t feel right. </p>
<p>Pink doesn’t feel like their colour. </p>
<p>She doesn’t know why.</p>
<p>(Except that she does.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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<p>When Archie comes home, fresh from being attacked by a <em> bear</em>, he tells her of a dream he had, although Jughead tells him what he’s talking about is a hallucination.</p>
<p>"When I dream about you," he says casually, as if Archie Andrews dreaming about Betty Cooper is something that happens all the time and not in Betty’s girlish imagination. "You’re always wearing that pink dress, with your hair in curls. I think that’s how I’d like to remember you, frozen in time, always wearing that pink dress."</p>
<p>Betty smiles and says nothing.</p>
<p><em> Me in that pink dress</em>, she muses. <em> That was another lifetime ago</em>.</p>
<p>But when she dreams of Archie, that’s where she is, dancing and laughing, spinning round and round, before the world changed and Betty Cooper became something a little less than perfect. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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<p>Jughead dies - except not really. They come up with the ruse, because that’s what they do, a makeshift Scooby gang in an underground bunker. </p>
<p>Veronica comes up with the idea, lighting up the room with her megawatt smile. "No one will see it coming," she gushes. "If we want people to believe that Jughead is <em> really </em> dead this is the perfect way to do it!"</p>
<p>But Betty remembers a time when Kevin had enthusiastically exclaimed to Veronica: "Betty and Archie aren’t dating, but they <em> are </em> endgame!"</p>
<p>She and Archie exchange awkward smiles across the room. It’s always been a little too easy for them to pretend.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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<p>When they kiss for the third time, Betty isn’t wearing pink. She’d worn it before, when they were faking it and no one knew for sure what was truly going on. But now everyone knows, so there’s no need to pretend. </p>
<p>She smiles at Archie over the microphone. He’s got his serious face on, but he smiles back, and inside Betty lights up. Suddenly it doesn’t matter if she’s wearing pink or not. </p>
<p>They’re singing an old song that Betty only halfway knows the words to. She and Archie used to play it on the radio back when they fixed cars in the summer, dancing in the showers that poured from the heavens, barely understanding the meaning behind the words.</p>
<p><em> That’s the pain that cuts a straight line down through the heart </em> -</p>
<p>They reach for each other at the same time. </p>
<p>Betty Cooper may not be perfect anymore, but something about this kiss feels exactly like how she always dreamed it would. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Pain and hurt, Betty realises, are all too common when talking about love. Jughead is all smiles and apologies and Betty tries to radiate forgiveness.</p>
<p>Jughead kisses her, but Betty doesn’t feel a thing. She keeps her smiles fixed on her face. She’s Betty Cooper, after all. And Betty Cooper does not break.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Betty keeps her eyes on the window, watching Archie’s fingers align against hers, even as they stand apart. She wishes, not for the first time, that they’d realised what had been alive all along. </p>
<p>There are tears in her eyes. Love isn’t supposed to hurt, not really. Except it does, because the girl next door loves the boy next door, just like she always has, just like she always will.</p>
<p>The more things change, the more things stay the same, it seems. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Love isn’t supposed to hurt, not really. Betty knows this, even though her parents hated each other and her boyfriend is also kind of her brother. She knows this, even as she sneaks a glance at the boy her best friend is in love with.</p>
<p>Love is supposed to be butterflies and magic touches and stars aligning.</p>
<p>Love is not supposed to tear someone in two.</p>
<p>And yet once again Betty thinks back to warm days in Archie’s garage, playing with tools they didn’t quite know how to use, running under Fred’s legs and making him laugh, and the old radio singing out a tune that she still remembers, even though it was nearly ten years ago.</p>
<p>"That’s the pain," she sings in a low whisper, spinning around her room like she did once upon a time. "That cuts a straight line down through the heart -"</p>
<p>And she remembers the words that she’d long ago forgotten. </p>
<p>
  <em> We call it love - </em>
</p>
<p>And Betty has been through so much pain, so much suffering, yet she’d come out the other side smiling with the butterflies in her chest born anew. </p>
<p>All at once it doesn’t matter who loves who and what will end and what will begin. All that matters is the way the butterflies take flight, the way the sun shines through Betty’s window pane. </p>
<p>Betty smiles suddenly, and straightens her sleeves.</p>
<p><em> We call it love</em>.</p>
<p>She’s wearing pink again. </p>
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